BLUE BODY MAKEUP

Scars Of Defiance

Paul Bronson’s family has housed defectors from the neighboring country ever since General Rawlings overthrew the favored monarchy thirty-years prior; several generations have been devoted to protecting the expatriates as they seek new lives away from the sadistic tyrant. The latest plane-load of refugees brings a beautiful young lady with a bounty on her head and a claim on Paul's heart.

Reginald Rawlings’ rule is crumbling and rumor brings word of an insurgent uprising. Desperate to regain his power, he feels the only way to calm the people is to have Princess Sierra Montgomery marry his son; thus placing the last survivor of the ousted royalty back in the palace. However, his plan goes awry when Sierra disappears with only four days to the wedding. The search is on for the missing princess and an infiltrator’s information puts all crosshairs on Paul’s new female refugee. The struggle to keep her safe and out of the enemy's hands will be the toughest thing Paul has ever done; for no one’s ever defied Gen. Rawlings’ fury and come out unscathed.

Paul Bronson’s family has housed defectors from the neighboring country ever since General Rawlings overthrew the favored monarchy thirty-years prior; several generations have been devoted to protecting the expatriates as they seek new lives away from the sadistic tyrant. The latest plane-load of refugees brings a beautiful young lady with a bounty on her head and a claim on Paul's heart.

Reginald Rawlings’ rule is crumbling and rumor brings word of an insurgent uprising. Desperate to regain his power, he feels the only way to calm the people is to have Princess Sierra Montgomery marry his son; thus placing the last survivor of the ousted royalty back in the palace. However, his plan goes awry when Sierra disappears with only four days to the wedding. The search is on for the missing princess and an infiltrator’s information puts all crosshairs on Paul’s new female refugee. The struggle to keep her safe and out of the enemy's hands will be the toughest thing Paul has ever done; for no one’s ever defied Gen. Rawlings’ fury and come out unscathed.

To Write Love on Her Arms
Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes
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Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had

A Poem About Chef Assassin

“To become a household word,” says Chef Assassin, “all you need is a rifle.”
This he learned early, watching the news. Reading the paper.
Chef Assassin standing onstage, he wears those black-and-white-checkered pants
that only professional cooks get to wear.
Billowing big, but still stretched tight to cover his ass.
His hands, his fingers, a patchwork of scabs and scars. Shiny old burns.
His white shirtsleeves rolled up,
and all the hair singed off the muscle of his forearms.
His thick arms and legs that don’t bend
so much as theyfoldat the knee and elbow.
Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment flickers:
where two close-up hands, the fingernails clean and the palms perfect
as a pair of pink gloves,
they skin a chicken breast.
His face, a round screen, lost under a layer of fat, his mouth lost under the pastry brush
of a little mustache,
Chef Assassin says, “That’s my backup plan.”
The Chef says, “If my garage band never gets a record contract—”
if his book never finds a publisher—
if his screenplay never gets a green light—
if no network picks up his pilot episode—
The Chef, his face worms and twitches with those perfect hands:
skinning and boning,
pounding and seasoning,
breading and frying and garnishing,
until that piece of dead flesh looks too pretty to eat.
A gun. A scope. Good aim and a motorcade.
What he learned as a kid, watching the news on television, every night.
“So I’m not forgotten,” the Chef says.
So his life isn’t wasted.
He says, “That’s my Plan B.”

Exerpted from Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted is a 2005 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The plot is a frame story for a series of 23 short stories, most preceded by a free verse poem. Each story is followed by a chapter of the main narrative, is told by a character in main narrative, and ties back into the main story in some way. I have decided to make a series of portraits of each of the 19 characters in this book. The title quote is the first line of each character's story and the description is each character's poem. The portraits are my personal interpretation to the words of the book.